Jake Tapper put on a clinic on handling people who come on air and lie. He fact-checked Trump’s Campaign Manager, Kellyanne Conway in real time.
Jake Tapper shows how journalism is done
Unlike George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd‘s poor showing of journalism, CNN Jake Tapper’s Kellyanne Conway interview is a lesson they could learn from to solve their inability to confront Donald Trump and his surrogates in a consistent manner. It is understood that not every journalist has the courage of Joy Ann Reid and Tamron Hall; however, Tapper shows it does not have to be all that difficult.
Conway responded to several of Tapper’s questions with falsehoods and attack. He frequently interjected to correct lies and misrepresentations. Here is a snippet of the exchange.
Jake Tapper: Can you confirm if Gennifer Flowers is going to be at the debate as a guest of Mr. Trump?
Kellyanne Conway: No, I cannot confirm that.
And I can’t believe how easily baited the Clinton campaign was. Basically, Mr. Trump was saying, look, if Mark Cuban is going to send out these texts that say the humbling at Hofstra and this is his big downfall, then Mr. Trump was putting them on notice that we could certainly invite guests that may get into the head of Hillary Clinton.
But we have not invited her formally and we don’t expect her to there as a guest of the Trump campaign. I did think it was really odd, just one day after Hillary Clinton was rebuffed by a Democratic mayor of Charlotte to please not come to Charlotte, not divert resources and not come at this time, then they exercise poor judgment the very next day by putting out a statement by the Clinton campaign about Gennifer Flowers and what this meant with Donald Trump. ..
Jake Tapper: Just as a point of fact, I think both Trump and Clinton were talking about visiting Charlotte, and the mayor said that they didn’t have the resources for either one to visit.
But I think it’s curious, and probably a lot of viewers are wondering, you think that what’s odd is the Clinton campaign’s reaction to Donald Trump tweeting about somebody that her husband had an affair with decades ago, not the fact that Donald Trump tweeted something about someone the nominee’s husband had an affair with decades ago?
Kellyanne Conway: It seems odd — it seems odd that they would give it life and breath since you just said three times in a row that Governor Clinton had an affair with her. I didn’t say it, but now a lot of Americans…
Jake Tapper: But Donald Trump gave it life, did he not? Donald Trump gave it life. He’s the one that brought it up.
Kellyanne Conway: No, he basically — well, and they could have left it at that. …
Hillary Clinton is running negative ads against him. You know what should be fact-checked? Hillary Clinton’s campaign two weeks ago saying she was going to become more uplifting and optimistic and aspirational. Where was that — where has that gone?
It’s negative ad after negative ad. It’s negative pieces of mail, phone calls, get-out-the-vote programs. We’re just not going to do that. We’re taking our case directly to the American people tomorrow in this debate, and, may I add, every single day out on the stump.
Jake Tapper: But, Kellyanne, it’s hard to — it’s hard to argue that Donald Trump hasn’t been negative about Hillary Clinton.